The Hologram
by Iffy Jr
Summary: Semi-AU Loki/Tony. "Never trust a man who surrounds himself with things that aren't supposed to exist. That's what Loki's been told, anyway. But Loki never really did like the quiet life. And, hey, what's so bad about a three day nap?" COMPLETE.
1. Prologue: The Colors

Author's notes: Another Avengers fic, whoops. It's, uh, something that I just wrote in like two days, with 33 pages and 16,425 words altogether. There are three chapters, plus a short prologue and epilogue each, and I just wrote chapters 2 through the epilogue…well, today. It's not really my favorite thing, but…well, I liked the prologue through chapter 2 a lot. It's chapter 3 I have a problem with and just don't feel like fixing. Haha whoops.

Anyway, it's a semi-AU, being that everything that happened in the Avengers and all the movies leading up to it were the exact same except that Tony "Iron Man" Stark never existed, nor did Pepper, Happy, or Jarvis since we meet them because of him and the like. So it's a semi-AU because, while everyone else is the same, Tony is actually a villain.

He's known as the Hologram, which will be explained throughout the fic so I'm not going to talk about it here. He's basically the same as Tony always is, but in more of a…BBC Jim Moriarty sort of way. Kind of insane, but totally brilliant and hate being bored. You don't need to have seen the BBC Sherlock to get that, though, it's really not important. He's got some "minor" powers, too, which will also be explained.

The prologue is in more of a third person-omniscient, but the rest of the chapters are going to be in Loki's third person perspective. Most of the other Avengers aren't as important as they are in a lot of other fics, but they're all in it. Also yes, Phil is still dead. It's all movie!verse canon except for Tony, Pepper, Happy, and Jarvis.

In any case, on with the story! Enjoy :)

PS this fic was inspired by the song "Iron Man" by Black Sabbath. Woo.

PPS I totally haven't gotten through and edited this yet so if there are any spelling or grammatical errors feel free to point them out so I can fix them before I actually go through and read the 33 pages I really don't want to right now. It's only like 9:30 at night too. I don't know I've been really tired lately ugh. Anyway! Onward.

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**Disclaimer**: None of the characters in this story are mine. They strictly belong to Marvel and whoever else has helped create the Avengers or the characters of Asgard.

**Summary**: Semi-AU Loki/Tony. "Never trust a man who surrounds himself with things that aren't supposed to exist. That's what Loki's been told, anyway. But Loki never really did like the quiet life. And, hey, what's so bad about a three day nap?" COMPLETE.

**Pairing**: Loki/Tony  
**Status**: Complete  
**Rating**: Mature  
**Warning/Not-warnings**: m/m pairing; smut; strong language; some small OOC qualities involving Tony/Iron Man; semi-AU; post-war

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**Prologue: The Colors**

They say he's immortal because of the accident. The accident was just an explosion of color. There were even colors without a name. Nobody knows what to call him because nobody knows his name. He changed it too often to know, and when he didn't change it there were others to change it for him. The only person who ever truly knew him died in that explosion. The explosion they say made him immortal. The explosion that he caused.

Nobody knew where he went, once, because he disappeared. Until they found his grave:

_Here Lies the Lies of a Man  
Who's Sight Only Exists  
When Colors Do Not_

Nobody knew what it meant. They pretended to know, but they don't. Nobody knew how or why he died, though they pretended that as well. All they knew was that they still believed him immortal after the death. They believed his soul tucked away beneath the ground for a purpose.

"He did it for his lost love", they say. One life to save another, because it's the life that he took in the colors. Nobody cared for him other her. Mostly because nobody knew him, but that was because he didn't want to be known. But they say he stayed immortal to avenge that love. His lovers hair was a waterfall of black ink dripping down her back, her eyes were like emeralds taken from the goddess of the fairies herself, and her skin was that of a pale cream. But she was gone.

"He did it to save the world", say the others. Save it from what was created from the accident, from the colors. Something of steel that was created in a magnetic field of silver and lead.

They wondered if he lost his mind in those colors, and that that's how his immortality died. Some saw him after the explosion, crawling out because his legs wouldn't work. He could stand, but he couldn't walk. He acted like he saw, but his eyes were the milky white of the blind. Red shimmers floated off of him, and golden rays shined from him when his eyes were wide.

That's when he disappeared. Whether for lost love or to save the world, he showed up everywhere. Not in his time, though. In the history books, carved in stone, painted on walls… Everywhere but his own time. He was known for the milky white of his eyes, the red that seemed to flutter off of him in glitter, and the gold that shined off of him in rays when he wanted to see.

That's when they found his grave. And they knew it was his grave, because it appeared on day in the front of his destroyed, abandoned home, and around it on the grass and on the freshly shoveled dirt were his sparkles of red that gave of little hints of golden light.

But one day… One day the dirt was nothing but a hole. No golden light, no body inside. Not even a coffin. And the words on the stone grave had changed:

_Here Lies That Which is Not  
And in Years to Pass  
The Colors Will Have Simply Blown Away_

_To Reveal Which Way it Went_

"Was he ever even there?" they asked. "Maybe it was a trick so that his enemies wouldn't find him," others said.

Nobody ever saw him again. And slowly…the legend trickled away. The grave was washed away in the floods and slides, and the house, and any thought of the man or his woman at all. Nobody knows it anymore. Nobody has ever known that the legend existed.

Only himself. Because he's still around, somewhere, searching for his enemies. Searching for his love of black ink and emerald green and pale cream. Searching when he cannot see, drenched in red glitter and golden rays.

They were all right. He did it for lost love, and he did it to save the world. But his lost love stayed lost, and the world was not grateful. So he lost his mind, deciding it was a far better way to live than in immortal agony. And he became the monster that he created, because what else was there to become? Steel and iron and titanium, gold and lead, glitter and light. Steel monsters, iron emotions, titanium suits. Silver beginnings, boots of lead. The glitter droplets of blood, the golden rays of that which is not truly there.

He has a name. A secret name that only his lost love knew. He forgot it many a time, but it always came back to him. And now he's alone, without a mind, without true sight, and without his love.

Anthony Edward Stark—the immortal of earth—the projection that does not exist—has found his enemies. Descendents of who they were, including one that looks rather familiar in one of his earlier lifetimes. They being all of those that simply stood by and _watched_ him and his lover _burn_ in his house.

Nicholas Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D.. The one eyed man with the dark skin and the darker clothes. Where do you think he lost that eye? How long has Tony been around to bother him? As long as the eye has been gone. His agents, soldiers, and his scientists. All are Tony's enemies.

And he will not rest unless one of two things are met. The first, all his enemies die. All members of S.H.I.E.L.D.. Every one. Or the second, he finds his lost love. And even with his lost mind he knows he will not find his love, so he has accepted full that it will be the first that must be fulfilled. Fury knows as well, which is why he looks through everything he can to find any trace of the man.

But what does he look up? He is called "The Hologram", now, which is his golden light that is not truly there, but nobody can even find a place to steal information on such a thing. He kills, which is the glitter droplets of blood, and who knows how to look up red glitter? Nor the grave, nor the explosion, nor the colors. He has not even tried the milky white eyes, for Tony has long disguised them as they're once old color of brown.

So they fight, and they fight, and they will continue to fight until the first or the second is met. And they both know that the second cannot be met.

So the Hologram wreaks havoc when he can, disappearing on occasion to replenish his weapons and golden rays. He's now been gone for fourteen months, and one month after his disappearance was when Loki and his army of Chitauri decided to do their own wreaking. Loki escaped, of course, and he came back, doing his own little things every now again.

And now… Now the Hologram is back.

Will these nightmares never end?

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End chapter notes: special thanks to Black Sabbath's "Iron Man", which is totally the song I listened to during most of writing this. That or having TV in the background, so thanks to Criminal Minds as well. Okay I also wrote it during school, but no thanks to any of my high school _or_ college classes (running start woo). Psychology is the worst, I tell you. My final's in just three days, though, so no more of that class! A whole week before the quarter's over, too :) Aaanyway, enough about me. This is just the prologue, so boooring! Not really important if you tell me what you think or not. That can be saved for the later chapters, if you so choose. Thanks for reading!


	2. Ch 1: The Truce

**1: The Truce**

Loki smirks down from the roof at his foes as they chase aimlessly after one of his many clones. Thor is trying to convince the one he thinks is real to "stop this madness", the mindless beast is scratching its head at the one he just smashed into disappearing, the man out of time is fighting two of them, and the powerless not-so-lovebirds are fighting on at the same time that they usher people safely out of the way.

Loki's not trying to kill anybody, though. He's just having a little fun. After his failure of taking over Midgard, he escaped from Asgard and took to terrorizing. He partakes in the occasional cause of death, but for the most part it's far more fun to see someone frightened of the prospect of death than actually dead.

Loki snickers and snaps his fingers, causing Thor's clone to disappear. The blonde growls angrily before going to help the captain.

Before he gets there, though, a crashing sort of boom sounds out. Loki snaps into a sitting position, looking over to where the cloud of smoke is billowing up. His eyes narrow. That wasn't him.

He snaps his fingers to make the other clones disappear so the "mightiest heroes of earth" can go see what it is. He follows after them from the rooftops, not caring if they see him or not.

Arriving to the smoke, Loki sees that it's simply a few bombs having gone off in one of the smaller New York buildings. Right as the five Avengers arrive, though, another one goes off, this time in a nearby (empty) bus.

Loki's eyes narrow. "Competition?" he mutters to himself. "I don't think so. This is _my_ city." He gets ready to jump off of the edge to try and find the bastard who's stealing his town, but just before he does, he notices something.

There's a man standing across the way, up on another roof as well. Loki can only see him or anyone else at this distance/height because of the eyes given him when he became the God of Fire and Lies.

He looks human from here, so it must just be some punk with a death wish. Loki prepares to leap across the roofs and over to him, but that's when the man notices the god. He gives the tiniest of grins, which means he knows hwo Loki is _and_ has eyes that can see the distance. Probably not human, then. He holds up a detonator before pressing a red button right smack in the middle, and a little sports car proceeds to flip up from a third explosion and nearly crushes Drakov's daughter, but the captain grabs her out of the way in time.

Loki looks back up at the man, who is now standing up on the ledge. He tosses his remote device behind him before spreading his arms out, and with a wink right at Loki, he proceeds to leap. Loki cocks an eyebrow and watches him, as do others at the bottom, ready for a splat. There isn't on, though. The man disappears just before the concrete.

Loki can't help but smirk. Certainly not human, then. He leaps from roof to roof until he gets to the one with the remote, picking it up to look it over. Eventually he pockets it, sure that it's linked to a tracking device. He'd like to speak to this new rival-terrorizer of his.

"I'm afraid we can't let you take that, Loki."

Loki turns to see the captain, Thor, and Loki's old arrow-shooting minion. He grins. "It's so good to see you again, captain," he says, batting his eyelashes. "And you, little hawk, look as dark as ever."

Barton is absolutely _glowering_, which just makes Loki laugh. "Looks like your friends are falling for my tricks too, _brother_," Loki says to the Thor. "About the remote, though. Well…" He shrugs. "It's mine now, you see. I'd like to meet the one behind all of this, and indeed this to do it."

"Do not make yourself twice the nuisance that you are, brother," Thor growls, taking a step towards him. "We _will_ find where you stay."

"Will you?" Loki smirks, hopping onto the ledge across from them. "It has been many months. You are looking in all the wrong places."

Right as Barton looses his arrow, Loki drops. He knows the man's skill well enough that he grabs a window ledge and swings to the side, and true enough a net spews out where Loki was only before. He smirks and leaps off again, disappearing off to his new place of residence.

It's a large condo—one in which he didn't pay for, of course. It's the reason nobody can seem to find him. They're looking in all the wrong places. Shady neighborhoods, but he's in a respectable building of brick and insulation.

He sets up one of his clones before bunkering down on the bed, ready for a nap before whenever his rival decides to show. Even gods have to rest, after all.

**XxX**

Loki wakes when his clone senses danger, so he sits up straight and swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. The clock reads four hours since falling asleep.

"So soon?" Loki asks the silent darkness of the room. Loki knows he's here. He can sense him. He can feel his heartbeat and his breathing.

As an answer, the man steps out of the shadows. He has brown eyes and dark brown hair, a precisely trimmed beard around his chin and mouth. He is short, yet strong looking, willing to fight anyone who comes his way.

There is a hardness in his eyes that gives away the grin on his lips, and Loki knows, because his eyes are the same. It is a hardness that comes with hatred and betrayal, and it comes without knowledge in which it is too late to stop. There seems to be a sort of red shimmer coming off of him, leaving a glittering red residue around him, the glitter disappearing the farther he gets away from it.

"I believe you have something that belongs to me," the man says, tilting his head the slightest bit.

"Oh?" Loki says, leaning back on his hands and crossing an ankle over his knee. "I quite believed it was the other way around."

The man cocks an eyebrow. "How do you figure that?"

Loki's grin darkens. "This is _my_ city, human. Mine to terrorize. I will not have a competition for what is rightfully mine. Are we clear?"

The man smirks, walking towards Loki. when he gets right in front of him, he bends down until their eyes are level. "Do I _look_ human to you?"

Loki is about to answer with a definite yes, but his eyes…change. Gold rays blaze from his skin and his eyes flicker from their once brown to a deep, burning red that screams of hatred and violence and death. Loki sees his past through them, of a fire destroying the only one he ever loved and of walking through this fire unscathed. He shows Loki his immunity to fire, an ability to breathe anything (be it air, poisonous gas, or nothing at all), and being able to disappear at will. On top of that he is also an excellent pickpocket and has never failed to bring into something, either a house or a safe or Loki's condo.

"Maybe you are not human," Loki says when the man stands back up, eyes flashing back to brown. "But you are still mortal, and therefore you are beneath me and not worth my time. So I will say it again: leave my city _alone_. It's mine. I was here first."

The man simply smirks again, taking a few steps back. "And how long ago did it become yours, may I ask?"

"I have been doing with it what I wish for thirteen months."

He chuckles. "I have been here _far_ longer than you. I was here before these buildings. I was here when this city was hills and trees and cottages. They took out the trees and cottages…they cut out the hills…they built Manhatten. This is my city, your majesty." He gives a mock courtesy in his jeans and t-shirt. What is a "Black Sabbath"?

"I was here before all of this. All of this is not yours, but _mine_."

Loki narrows his eyes. "How were you here before all of this if you are mortal?"

"I _was_ mortal," the man snaps. When Loki simply cocks an eyebrow, his face softens again. "I was the mad scientist of my day. That's what they called me. Things went wrong, and that's how the fire started. My… The explosive fire that killed my wife instead gave me my powers. People stood by on that day, you know. People who could have helped. But they just _watched_. Too stupid and afraid to save fellow lives. I did not know of my abilities at the time, and I ran away. I could not bare with the thought of living without her. We believed her to be with child, but if her charred, mangled body had anything to say about it, that child was long gone."

Loki has to force his face to stay emotionless. He too knows what it's like to loose a child.

"I tried to start another fire, to burn myself as well, but that's when I found that it could not harm me. Before I simply believed I was the lucky one—and I was, just not in the way I thought. As years passed I also found myself unable to age. So…" He throws his arms out. "Here I am. Immortal in a dying world. Terrorizing the descendants of those who ignored me and killing those that have nothing to do with it just because it's fun." He gives a bright smile. "I used to kill one person a year, for each year that I didn't age, but…" He shrugs. "Where's the fun in only one?"

Loki frowns. "Fine. This is your city. But I'm not leaving."

"Oh, no, I didn't expect you to."

"Then why are you telling me all of this?"

The man smiles. "Because you have nobody to tell. Now, are you going to give me back my remote or not?"

Loki glares at him. "What's your name?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Because I have nobody to tell."

He smirks. "I have many names. The Mad Scientist. Manhattan's Madman. The Son of Fire. My personal favorite is the Hologram, for I am there one moment to kill and gone the next, like a transmission losing its focus. Which would you like?"

Loki refrains from commenting on the second to last one, solely because he does not feel like explaining that _he_ is the _God_ of Fire, and this man is certainly not his son. "Which is your first given?" he asks.

"How bland," the man says, flitting a wrist. "As a newborn, I was given the name of Anthony. Those who know me in this life, though, call me Tony."

Loki tilts his head. "You hate this world, yet you have friends in it?"

"Did I say friends? No. they are simply my pawns that I will use until they have been sucked dry of all emotional and physical ecstasies."

Loki smiles. "You are becoming more and more entertaining as we speak."

Anthony smiles back. "Do I get your name? Hair so black and eyes so green and skin so pale deserves a name, don't you think?" Something flashes in his eyes. Another blaze of gold to bright red eyes before it disappears.

Loki licks his lips. "You don't know yet?"

"I'm sure I do."

Loki stands in the same swift movement that he pulls the remote out of his jacket that he slept in. "I do not know my firstborn name, but my adopted father gave me my title as a god when I was still very young. I was Loki, God of Fire and Lies."

He smirks as Anthony takes it. "We'll just have to see who's better in a world of flame."

"Oh, you will win, undoubtedly," Anthony says, pocketing the device. "I am simply immune to it. Though, if I do say… It _does_ seem to follow me wherever I go. I wonder why that is." With a smirk, and before Loki can so much as blink, he's gone, disappearing into nothing."

Loki smiles again, quite positive his fire will continue to follow him. He is one of the most entertaining things Loki has found in this godforsaken world, and he's not going to let it go.

Loki chuckles. "Godforsaken," he repeats with a chuckle. "Hardly." He crawls back into bed, ready for more rest so that he can terrorize the city even longer tomorrow.

**XxX**

Loki wakes three days later in his condo, his clone disappearing. He stretches before swinging out of his window, climbing up the walls to the roof.

"So peaceful…" he muses, looking around on the ledge. "I can fix that!"

Loki pulls a loose brick from the roof and aims so that it will hit the top of a parked care before throwing it, giggling wildly at the screams and the way the car squeals go off at being touched. He leaps off to another building, doing the same to about three other cars, getting bigger and bigger roof chunks as he goes.

"Up so soon?" a voice asks on Loki's fifth roof.

Loki turns to see not any member of the Avengers, but the very highest of S.H.I.E.L.D. himself.

"Three days is hardly soon, Mr. Nicholas, sir," he says, leaning against the brick ledge. "My question is how you found me so fast."

"We've had helicopters out all morning," he saysdarkly. "The problem is that you don't have a set system. One week you attacked three days in a row, other times you attacked once before leaving three days in-between and then attacking for two in a row. We're never prepared."

Loki smirks. "Except for the snipers you have pointing from all different points? You should know by now that I am impervious to bullet fire, my friend. Is it not fire power? And _who's_ the God of Fire?"

Fury rolls his eye. "I am not here to take you in, Loki."

Loki cocks an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Yes, it's about our _older_ problem."

"You mean the man who blew up things three days ago? The one with the remote before he disappeared?"

"Yes," Fury says angrily. "_That_ man."

Loki chuckles. "You don't even know his name, do you? He told me."

Fury raises an eyebrow. "He did, did he?"

"Oh yes. I'm not going to tell you, though. What is it you want about him, Nicky?"

"We want him caught."

Loki laughs. "Yes, well, you want me too, but it looks like you don't always get what you want."

"I'm asking for your help."

"What, and betray a fellow villain? I don't think so. That's not how it works. It's like jail, Nick, just…bigger."

"It will enact a truce between our two parties, meaning you will not be hunted until he is captured."

"I'm sure he prefers to be known as the Manhattan Madman, or something along those lines."

Fury's eye narrows. "We call him the Hologram, actually. Do you know why?"

"Because he's there one moment to tell and then gone a next, like a transmission losing its focus?"

Fury gives a short chuckle. "Because he's been terrorizing me and my men since the moment I joined this force. _He's_ the reason my eye is missing. _Years_ of his torment and he doesn't seem to age or even grey around the edges. We say he's immortal, but we've been looking for a little more proof than his looks or his word for it. He also attacks with light. That is why we call him the Hologram. Because holograms are light rays and therefore do not age, and his destruction methods. We want him, Loki, and we have for years. Nothing is working. We are branching out to our enemies. You have no bond with him, so why protect him? My men will leave you alone if you hold up your end of the deal, and you will even be allowed to eat our food."

"Mmm, yes, and what exactly _is_ my part of the deal?"

"You help us capture him, and in the process my men will leave you alone _if_ you stop terrorizing the city during the time it takes to bring him in. After that the truce is off and you go back to what you're doing right now. Everything is back to normal." He holds his hand out. "Do we have a deal?"

Loki stares at his hand, unsure whether he should trust it or not. On the one end, you never betray a fellow villain. On the other, Fury's right. Loki owes him nothing. He spoke to him once and told him to leave his city alone—even though it's not technically his compared to Anthony, who's been here since before the city even existed. It's still his, though, and no matter how long somebody has been here, he wants it _back_.

So he smiles at Fury and releases a clone to walk over and shake his hand, snapping it away once the shake has finished.

"Then we have a deal," Fury says.

"We have a deal," Loki repeats, stepping onto the building ledge. "Oh, but one thing."

Fury glares. "What _now_?"

Loki smirks, holding his arms up beside him, just as Anthony has done. "I'm _not_ going to eat with you."

He drops as Fury laughs, swinging around long before he hits the ground. Hopefully Fury knows this deal means nothing about helping the Avengers with anything else they do. He doesn't care what the Hologram does to the people of the city, so he honestly doesn't care if he's stopped. He's just trying to get him in, and in return Loki will continue to terrorize the city in such ways that they will all think it's just Anthony. And, to be honest, he probably will eat with them every once in a while. Even to Loki, stealing food can get quite boring.

Loki sighs as he leaps onto the three story roof of the Avengers mansion, wishing he could have kept one of the Chitauri bikes for things like this. They couldn't bank worth a damn, but it was better than jumping around everywhere. Loki can only teleport when he has the power of the Tesseract, and his staff was destroyed back those thirteen months ago.

Thor drops down beside him. He was the one who came in contact with him to inform him of the meeting Fury called. He keeps trying to talk, but Loki won't have it.

"There you are," the Black Widow says, pushing off from leaning against the thick chimney. "This way, boys." She flips backwards and dives down said chimney, and Thor nods for Loki to follow.

It's a sort of slide, spewing out into a room stuffed full of pillows. Loki wrinkles his nose up, crawling out to stand beside Romanov on a platform by the door so that he's out of Thor's way. They walk in a single file line down the corridor, Loki sandwiched between the two soldiers, until they come to a conference room filled with Fury, the other Avengers, and some different S.H.I.E.L.D. agents.

"Oh good," Barton mutters. "Boss' here."

Loki smirks at an agent, ignoring the hawk. "Didn't I kill you?"

"Alright, _enough_," Fury says as Thor motions for Loki to sit. "As you all know, Loki is under a truce, and therefore we will not fight him if he does not terrorize _us_." He eyes Loki darkly, but the god just rolls his eyes.

"Are we going to start this meeting or not?" he asks, slapping Thor's hand away as he goes to grab his arm, no doubt going to mutter for him to be quiet as well.

Fury glares at him before doing so. "Our target is a known enemy to us all, known as the Hologram. He—"

"It's Anthony," Loki interrupts. "His real name is Anthony."

Fury blinks at him. "Thank you, Loki." He continues on: "As most of you also know, the Hologram is the one who took my eye." A light beams onto the wall, and something called PowerPoint starts up to show three different pictures of Anthony. One is a black and white of him in a very fine suit, another is a painting of him holding something with a lot of teeth, and the third is a very recent depiction of him in all his shining glory.

"This is what he looks like now, to the far right. He's been around since the fifteen-hundreds, long having made himself immortal—on accident, it seems. He attacks with bombs, gases, poisons, and hard light holograms. This last technique is of a technology that nobody else is known to have yet, as hologramatic AI's are not supposed to exist yet."

He presses a button to change the slide, bringing up three other people. One woman with orange hair and freckles labeled "Pepper", a stocky (but probably all muscle) man labeled "Happy", and a human-shaped robot labeled "Jarvis".

"These are his 'favorite' hard-light hologramatic AI's. the woman is known as the Secretary, the man is the Chauffer, and the robot is the Lifeline. We call them these things because that's exactly what he calls them himself. He has others as well, though not as important to him. He names every last one of them, which we've learned by their nametags."

He clicks for the next slide, bringing up a video. "This is a clip sent to us by the Hologram eighty-four years ago, before any of us who isn't a god was even born. It's from one of the very first video cameras ever made. This will give you a better depiction of what he's really like."

Clicking play, the video rolls along to a black and white of Anthony, looking exactly as he does now except for his clothes, sitting in front of a black background. "Hello?" he says, tapping it. "Is this thing on?" He laughs. "My god, technology has come so far." He sits down on a cushiony chair, a small table beside him. "This is a message to all S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, new and old, but specifically to those with the last names of Fury, Hill, and Coulson. You're ancestors are the ones that simply _watched_. You could have saved us, you bastards." He frowns and leans over to straight the camera angle. "This ultimate goal to kill you all, though, is under a condition. I was born in 1572." He grins. "Pretty good face for someone who's three-hundred and fifty-six years old, yeah?

"Anyway, in 1599, just hours before the turn of the century, one of my experiments went wrong. There was an explosion, and in the fire of the explosion I found that I was given the powers of aging immortality and an immunity to fire and other forms of intense heat. My wife, on the other hand, who was with child at the time, simply burned until dead. She is my condition. If I don't get her back I'll continue to kill every last one of you. And seeing that she's dead, I suggest you pick out a coffin lining in a color that doesn't clash with your uniform." He clears his throat before holding up the oldest, frailest frame that Loki has ever seen. This is a painting I had done a year before the explosion. As you can see this is an antique by now, so if anything happens to it I'll kill even those who have nothing to do with this feud between us. It's the only picture that I have left of her."

Loki stands. "Pause it."

Fury does, giving him a look. "What is it?"

Loki walks slowly to the screen, staring up at the woman. "I know her," he says quietly, running a hand down her face.

"What?" Rogers asks. "You _know_ her?"

Loki turns around. "I do." Gathering up his shape shifting magic, he changes into the female form of himself that he's used for over five-hundred years. "She's me."

Fury blinks at him. "We know."

Loki glares at him in his female form. "You didn't bring me into this because you thought I'd be helpful, did you?"

"I did because I didn't want to deal with you at the same time as someone who kills _every_ time he attacks."

"Are you lying to the _God_ of Lies?" Loki snarls at him. "Are you _looking_ for death? You _know_ why you brought me here."

"The Hologram is looking for a woman," Rogers says. "You're only half of one."

Loki ignores him, continuing to glare at Fury.

Eventually the director sighs, looking up at the screen.

"I won't do it," Loki says. "I will not be used in such a way. I may be the Liesmith, but I will not _pretend_ for something so important."

Fury looks back at him. "I didn't expect you to. It was just an idea."

Loki slams back into his chair and turns back into a man. "A horrible idea, thank you. Press play." Loki knows that Fury wanted him to pretend to be Anthony's long lost love, but he won't do it. Love is not a game. He'd rather everyone in this room die.

Fury lets the video continue:

Anthony sets the frame aside. "Being that this isn't in color, I want to explain to you that she has raven black hair, emerald green eyes, and porcelain pale skin. If you know anyone like that…" He shrugs. "Feel free to tell me." He pushes a hand through his hair. "Anyway, the point of this whole thing is just to inform you that, if I don't get to kill you, I'll kill anyone you leave behind. Whether you choose to believe me or not is not my problem. Either way, people _will_ die." He smirks. "Good luck." With a wink and a mock-salute, the camera clicks off to black and the video stops.

"The painting was destroyed seven years ago," Fury says, "which is when he began to kill innocent people all across the New York State, though specifically in this very city. His murders are the reason we are recruiting an actual team to try and stop him. He has a habit, I'm afraid, of disappearing as well. We don't know where he goes, but once he's gone he doesn't come back for at least half an hour. After he terrorizes whom and what he can for at least a month, usually more, he tends to lay away for a very long time. He's now back after fourteen months, quite conveniently leaving us a month before our short-term friend tried to take us over.

Loki grins. "Can't blame me for trying."

Thor grabs angrily onto Loki's upper arm. "If it weren't for this truce, brother," he growls, "you would have been carted back to Asgard the moment you landed on this roof."

"If it weren't for this _truce_," Loki spits back, "I wouldn't have been _on_ the roof."

Thor is about to speak again, but Dr. Banner beats him to it: "Boys, please, you're both pretty."

Thor glares at him, but Loki can't help but smile. For someone so uptight so he doesn't Hulk out, he can be very sarcastic. Loki is terrified of him (which is not something he will ever admit out loud). Another beating like that and he'll probably end up with a permanent spine dislocation.

"I am, aren't I?" Loki purrs, twirling a lock of his hair.

Romanov rolls her eyes.

"Pipe down, motherfuckers," Fury says. "We're not finished yet." He presses for the slide to change again, showing a crudely created animated version of Anthony. "For lack of a better description, the red particles on him are referred to as glitter. Other than the fact that they're pretty, they're poisonous to the touch. They disappear when Anthony gets a certain distance away from them, and this distance is very short. Only a few inches at most. He's also blind, so—"

"What?" Loki says. "How is he—"

"Let me finish," Fury says, eyeing him.

Loki rolls his eyes and slumps into his chair.

"He's blind, covering up his milky white eyes with a brown substance that is _not_ a contact. He can see at certain times, though, and you'll know when these times are because his body—specifically his eyes—will shine a golden color before the brown disappears to reveal blood red. When he shines again they'll be back to brown." He clicks the power button, turning the screen off. "That's all we know about him."

"It's all true," Loki supplies instantly. "He can show you his past when his eyes are red. I saw it."

Romanov cocks an eyebrow. "He can show you his past?" he asks.

He lolls his head over to blink at her. "You outsmarted me once, agent. Don't think you'll do it again."

She smirks. "Watch me."

"Motherfuckers dismissed," Fury mutters. "If I catch anyone fighting with our _guest_ I'll be forced to take away your ping pong privileges."

Everyone in the room but Loki starts to protest.

"Mother of Odin," Loki says, rolling his eyes as he stands. "I'll leave, okay? Nobody needs to lose their…" He wrinkles his nose up. "Table tennis privileges." He walks out of the room, ignoring the fact that Thor and Barton are trailing after him.

"Sure you don't want to stay?" Barton asks darkly once he gets to the bottom floor via the stairs. "We can play Tesseract Take-Over."

Loki turns around in front of the front door to glare at him. "You wanna go, little hawk?" he asks, stepping right up to him. "You can't even _fly_."

"Neither can you," he growls back, stepping up until their chests are touching. For someone so short, he sure is brave. "Wanna play?"

"What're the rules?"

"I kill you." He smirks darkly. "Everybody wins."

Loki chuckles, taking a step back. "Some other time, little hawk." He swings open the door. "Right now I have a city not to terrorize." He walks out, slamming the door behind him. It's caught before it closes, though, and Thor continues after him.

"You should not taunt him like that, brother," he says, taking his elbow lightly to turn him around.

Loki sighs, turning around to face him. "I only do because he does it right back."

"He dislikes you."

"And I dislike him."

"He wants to like you."

"And I—what?"

"We all want to like you, Loki, but you've tried to kill every last one of us at least once."

"I never tried to kill Barton. He, on the other hand, tried to blow me up."

"You took over his mind, Loki. Nearly two full days of memory, lost. He doesn't know what to do with himself."

"You think this is easy?" Loki snarls. "This is…" He trails off, pursing his lips. "Actually," he says, thinking about the way he throws concrete chunks off of roofs and watches Thor try to plead with clones. "It is easy!" He laughs, throwing his head back. "In fact, it's so easy its _fun_." He turns around and continues to walk away. "Don't follow me, Thor, or I'll have to break the truce."

* * *

End chapter notes: I've decided that this story might go a lot faster than I initially intended. Not because I'm bored, but…I just finished a 300-plus page story and I'm trying to get through editing it. I'm tired okay XD PS lots of smut in the next chapter woo


	3. Ch 2: The Misbehaving

**2: The Misbehaving**

When there are no clouds, the sunset is the most beautiful from the shoulder of the Statue of Liberty. Today, on the other hand, there are many clouds, and therefore this Friday night is as ugly as it usually is.

"Fancy meetin' you here."

Loki looks over to see Anthony sitting on the shoulder of the Jarvis robot, having flown up to hover with silent boosters.

The god smiles. "I didn't know you were blind."

He smiles warmly. "Only sometimes."

Loki nods, looking away again. "I'm supposed to be bringing you in, you know," he says.

He tilts his head slightly. "Oh?"

Loki nods. "I made a deal with those enemies of yours to help bring you in. I don't really get anything out of it, but…" He shrugs. "They won't be looking for me or trying to lock me up, either. I don't get very much out of it, but they do trust me enough to walk around inside their mansion, and that means learning new secrets so I can get in later."

Loki hops off of Jarvis and sits down beside Loki. "Which enemies?"

Loki looks up at the higher clouds. "S.H.I.E.L.D. and all that that implies."

He nods. "I figured. I don't really have that many who are out to get me as specific as they are. Did you just deal today?"

Loki nods.

"Where were you before then?"

"What do you mean?"

"You weren't around for three days. I didn't see you on any rooftops. Where were you?"

"My room."

"Doing…?"

"Sleeping."

He cocks an eyebrow. "You slept for three days?"

He shrugs again. "Just a nap."

Anthony laughs, looking over at Happy, still hovering there, before back at Loki. "You gods are weird."

"We _gods_ are the reason you exist. Show some respect."

Anthony rolls his eyes. "If I must. But, hey, if you're supposed to be helping them bring me in then why are we up here just talking?"

"Where's the fun in capturing somebody on the first day? I've got to have a _little_ fun with a truce."

"Oh, a _truce_, it is? You're not allowed to mess with the city unless the deal's off, then?"

"Precisely. It's going to be very…boring."

Anthony scoffs. "I can't stand being bored."

"Are you just going to sleep some more?"

"Probably. Terrorizing people gets very tiring, and when I'm not even allowed to terrorize them I might as well just waste some time."

"You can sleep at my place. Jazz it up a bit."

Loki looks over at him, a sad smile on his lips. "I know what you want with me, Anthony."

Anthony's eyes and body shine like golden rays before they disappear, and his brown eyes are now red so that Loki knows he can see him. "Oh?"

"Yes, but it's not what you think. _I'm_ not who you think I am. She's gone."

Anthony looks away, holding his knees up to his chest. "I know she's gone. It's been four-hundred and thirteen years. I know she's not just going to…show up." He turns back to Loki with a grin. "But you're here now, and my place is just a thought away."

Loki rolls his eyes, looking away again. "It won't be the same."

Suddenly, Anthony is grabbing onto Loki's shoulders, and the next thing he knows is that he's dropping onto his back onto one of the softest beds that he's ever been on. He can't see anything in the room around him, with Anthony kneeling above him, because there's a dark red canopy made of a thick velvet draped around the bed. There's a small chandelier, the lights dimmed low.

Anthony kisses him hard, pinning his hands to the bed and placing one knee between Loki's legs.

Loki gets out of it easily, though, seeing that he has super strength, being a god and all. He's spun them over so that Anthony's now pinned to the bed.

"You don't want to do this, Anthony. I'm not her."

"Maybe not, but you sure as hell look like her." He bends up to kiss him again.

Loki pulls away, sitting up on his lap. "I will not be used in such a way, you filthy human."

"I'm not—"

"Yes, you are. Immortality does not change your species." Loki starts to shove the canopy aside to get out, but Anthony grabs his hands, having sat up as well.

"No, you can't go out there."

Loki glares. "And why not?"

"You're my enemy now. I can't let you see where I live."

Anthony smiles warmly, placing a hand on his cheek. "You're nothing like her, Loki. There's no way I could ever make a mistake between the two of you—not to mention the fact that you're a man. I may still want her, but right now…" He licks his lips. "Right now I haven't had a real sexual encounter in eight years, and I want _you_."

Loki frowns, watching Anthony's hand slide off of his cheek and down to where his hip is layered in fabrics. "What makes you think that _I_ want _you_?"

Anthony smirks, glancing down for only a second. "I think we can _both_ tell that you want me."

Loki has him pinned back down in the blink of an eye. "You'll have to be patient," he says, nipping lightly at Anthony's jaw line. "This armor is _not_ easy to get off."

Anthony chuckles. "Let's just take all of it off beforehand, then."

Loki grins and nods, sitting down beside him to begin the process. Anthony helps when he can, but after a while he just kicks his own things off until he's in his boxers and helps by pushing Loki's things off the side of the bed.

"Asgardian's don't wear underwear," he says when he's down to his thin pair of black under-pants.

Anthony smirks, swinging around to straddle Loki. "Good," he kisses him again, pushing him back down against the bed.

"If you think you're topping tonight," Loki says at length as they're catching their breath, "you are sorely mistaken."

Anthony breathes a laugh and leans up from the kisses he was trailing down Loki's neck. "I assumed so. Either way I'm gonna be sore." He grins. "Stretch me good, yeah?"

Loki pulls him back down, grinding up against him as he sucks on his neck and lets his hands trace over the man's skin. "I haven't done this in a few years either," he says.

"Yeah?" Anthony asks breathlessly, his hands gripping tight to Loki's sides. "How old are you, anyway?"

"One-thousand, two-hundred, and eighty-five. That's seven-hundred and seventeen AD in this world."

He chuckles. "Bit of a pedophile, Lo'."

Loki rolls his eyes with a smile. "My body is thirty-eight in human years."

Anthony leans up to grin at him. "Your body is eleven years older than mine is."

"My _body_ is coursing like my daughter herself, so—"

"Hold the phone," Anthony says, shaking his head in confusion. "Your daughter?"

"Oh yes. Hela, I called her. She's queen of the Asgardian underworld."

"Oh, I thought you meant—"

Loki laughs. "A demigod? Certainly not. She is a pure goddess."

"Mmm, good." He kisses him hard at the same time that he unlaces Loki's under-pants, and Loki helps him push them down and out of the way. Anthony's go off next, pushing everything off of the end of the bed.

Both men gasp at the open contact, rubbing shamelessly against the other, arms and hands and legs twining around each other.

Anthony pulls away from the kiss a while later, dragging himself slowly down Loki's body, darting his tongue out as he goes.

Loki whimpers at the feeling, but when Anthony licks up the underside of his cock he ends up sitting straight up.

Anthony chuckles. "Liked that?"

"Uh-huh," Loki says, nodding.

Anthony licks his lips and goes back down, this time surrounding the head of Loki's cock. Loki breathes out a moan, threading the fingers of one hand into Anthony's dark brown hair as the man continues to suck him down.

Loki is too close too soon—gods, he's close. But not yet. He doesn't want—

Anthony pulls away, grinning up at Loki as he wipes a dribble of saliva off his chin. "If it wasn't so obvious you didn't want to come yet," he says, "I totally would have swallowed that. And you know what then?"

"Mmm, what?" Loki asks, nipping at his bottom lip.

"I would have sucked off a _god_."

Loki chuckles, letting go of Anthony's head and dropping his hands down to his hips. "That's such a feat you could probably put it on a résumé."

"Yeah?"

"_Oh_ yeah."

Anthony kisses him softly, pushing him onto his back again before pulling Loki with him as he rolls so that Loki ends up on top. "I want you," he breathes, tracing his fingers down Loki's chest.

"Lubricant?" Loki asks.

Anthony stands above Loki and reaches up to where the lamps at the top of the canopy are, pulling out a small bottle. "Always be prepared," he says, kneeling down beside him.

Loki smirks, sitting up. "Hands and knees."

Anthony does so, arching his back down and his ass up in a picture so beautiful that Loki finds himself simply staring before shaking his head back into reality. He coats three of his fingers in the lubricant before reaching up, circling Anthony's entrance before pushing a finger in. He soaks in Anthony's moans of pleasure as he stretches shim, and he doesn't even finish with the third finger before Anthony pushes him away.

"That's good enough," he says, rolling onto his back. "I don't want to wait any longer.

Loki nods, grabbing the lube again to coat his own length before throwing Anthony's legs over his shoulders. He circles Anthony's entrance to give a fresh outer coating, looking up at Anthony's face.

"Ready?"

Anthony nods, and Loki pushes in slowly, biting hard on his bottom lip. He's been with men before, but something about Anthony is just so…hot.

Loki comes before Anthony does, the Hologram close behind. Anthony had dropped his legs a while ago, so Loki is able to easily collapse beside him curling up against his side with one arm wrapped around his waist.

"What about that?" Anthony asks, rolling to face him.

Loki gives a confused look. "What?"

"Holding out longer than a god. Can that go on my résumé?"

Loki breathes a laugh. "You did it on purpose?"

Anthony nods. "It was a lot of work."

Loki kisses him softly, pulling his arm tighter so that Anthony comes closer. "I don't want to move," he eventually mutters.

Anthony chuckles. "Then don't." He pulls the blankets over them.

"No, no, I can't stay. We're enemies, remember?"

Anthony smiles and kisses his forehead. "Not right now we're not. Go to sleep."

"I shouldn't."

"So?"

Loki blinks at him. "You're right." He shimmies down so that his head is at the bottom of the pillow and the blankets up to his nose. "I'm not your wife," he mumbles against Anthony's chest.

"I know," Anthony whispers, stroking his hair. "You just happen to look a hell of a lot like she would as a man."

Loki yawns. "What was her name?"

"I'll tell you in the morning, yeah? You'll fall asleep before I get it—"

Loki's mind goes black.

**XxX**

When Loki wakes up, he has no idea how much time has passed. All he knows is that he can only see because of his night vision, because the lamp's at the top of the canopy are off.

"Ah, you're awake," a voice says.

Loki looks up at the lamp, seemingly from where it came from. "Hello?"

"Yes, my voice is coming from this location." A blue strip glows as the voice speaks, and the lights turn on. "My name is Jarvis. Master Anthony has ordered me to reassure you that you are safe upon waking, sir. He is in his basement and will be up momentarily."

Loki purses his lips. "Thank you. You're the—ah—the robot, yes?"

"Correct. I was initially a body-less AI, but Master Anthony has given me a hard light body of hologramatic tissue."

"Hologramatic tissue?"

"It is very difficult to understand. I will not try to explain it. Besides, Master Anthony is just entering the room."

The sound of a door swinging open reaches Loki's ears, and the next thing he knows is that Anthony is climbing up from the bottom of the velvet canopy. "Morning," he says with a smile, dressed again. "Sleep well?"

Loki nods, picking at a piece of loose skin on his wrist. "How long was I out?"

"Seventeen hours."

"My normal time after sex, then." He stretches his arms out, not at all surprised when Anthony crawls up further and straddles him in his jeans, t-shirt, and shoes. "How long did you sleep?" he asks.

"Eight hours less than you." He grins. "Want to see my house? You can put your other clothes back on."

"Ugh, armor," he mutters.

"You can wear something of mine if you want."

"Thank you, but I'm not a big fan of jeans."

"I don't own _just_ jeans. I have sweatpants and pajama bottoms as well. You'd fit in one of my bigger shirts, too."

Loki smiles. "Alright."

Anthony grins and kisses him softly, pushing his fingers through his hair. "Jay?" he says once having pulled away. "The canopy, if you will."

The lamp goes off as the curtain opens up from the bottom of the bed until it's been completely pushed back, revealing the bed to the rest of the room. It's…not cozy, to say the least. A white tile floor, white walls, and no personal items sitting on the white dresser or hanging on the walls. There are two white doors, one open to a white hallway and the other shut.

"I'm never in my room," he says, looking around with Loki. "The only thing I do in here is sleep and get dressed, so my bed is the only thing that I keep up."

"Just your lab, then?"

"Most of the time."

"What do you work on?"

"My company." He grins. "You wanna meet some?"

Loki tilts his head. "You mean your holograms?"

He nods.

Loki gives a small and toothless smile, but warm. "Get me those clothes and I'd love to."

Anthony kisses the tip of Loki's nose before swinging off of the bed and going over to the dresser drawers, pulling out a pair of grey sweats, a green t-shirt, and a roll of socks. "Want a pair of underwear or…?"

Loki wrinkles his nose up. "No thank you."

Anthony tosses the clothes onto the bed, and Loki gets up so he can put them on. He doesn't remember how the dried come got off him, but to be honest he doesn't really care.

"You should wear stuff like that more often," Anthony says, taking Loki's hand.

"Shouldn't I get my own things?" Loki asks, looking back at his things all over the floor by the bed.

"Jarvis will get them. Come on, I want you to meet Pepper and Happy."

Anthony pulls him through hallway after hallway, passing more and more doors but never going inside any of them. There are multiple pairs of stairs they go down, and some of the hallway floors descent slightly, so Loki only knows that they're going farther and farther down. Eventually they come to a doorway at the end of a hall instead of on the side, also white as everything else. Anthony pushes it open, and Loki is brought into one of the longest open rooms that he's ever seen on Midgard. It's absolutely _filled_ with human looking creations and Loki just assumes are hard light holograms, all of them walking around and conversing like they're completely human. The rest of the room is filled with multiple electronic devices, all sorts of experiments and little kite prisms hanging around the room.

A few of the holograms look over and give Anthony a bright smile, but most of them just ignore them.

"How many are there?" Loki asks.

"Walking around in here there are about…oh…just twenty-six. There are three others out and about, though, including Jarvis." He closes the door and walks to the right, where sits a desk and the woman Loki knows as Pepper.

"Hiyuh, Pep!" he says, swinging around the desk and plopping onto her lap. "Miss me?"

She gives him a dark look, tapping her perfect nails against the desk. "You were gone for fifteen minutes, Tony."

"So? I missed you."

She sighs. "Yes, I missed you. Get off of my lap so I can finish this paperwork."

Anthony hops up, swinging back around to pull Loki over. "This is Loki," he says, smiling brightly between the two of them. "Doesn't he look just like—"

"Tony! Back already?"

Anthony and Loki look over to see the hologram known as Happy.

"Don't encourage him," Pepper mutters, picking her pen back up. "You know he gets unnecessarily bright after having sex."

"I didn't brag about it," Anthony instantly says to Loki. "They could just tell, I swear."

Happy snorts. "Word of advice," he says, resting a hand on Loki's shoulder. "Never trust a man who surrounds himself with things that shouldn't exist." He walks over to Pepper. "Finished?"

She glares up at him. "Do I _look_ finished?"

He holds his hands up in surrender. "Touchy, babe."

Loki smiles, looking around the room again. "Where are they projected from?" he asks.

Anthony points to the kite prisms. "There, but it has to be stronger when they leave the…property. I won't tell you where that is or you might tell Fury."

"The last Coulson is dead," Loki says, leaning against Pepper's desk.

Anthony frowns. "Catalina?"

Loki frowns back. "Maybe not. I mean Phillip."

Anthony growls. "What happened to him?"

"Thirteen months ago, just before the Chitauri attack that I lead. I killed him myself."

Anthony grins, looking over at Pepper and Happy. "I knew I liked him."

"Who's Catalina?" Loki asks.

"Ph's mom," Pepper supplies. "We haven't been able to locate her, so she's either hiding or already dead of old age."

"Alright, enough about work," Anthony says, taking Loki's hand. "There are some others you need to meet."

Loki is, in the end, introduced to all of the other twenty-four hard light AI's, including hearing about the other two that Anthony sent out to kill a few agents. Hoawrd and Maria were his parents, Obadiah was his lying and cheating priest, and Christine was the woman who tried to break up his marriage with his wife while it was happened. Those are the four most important aside from Pepper, Happy, and Jarvis, though Loki's not entirely sure why.

Afterwards, Anthony and Loki end up in a black and white decorated living room while being waited on by a set of triplet maids.

"Killed those three about forty-one years ago," Anthony had said as they served wine as the pasta for lunch was cooking. That let's Loki know the general time that it is.

Now Loki has just finished eating, and he has a few questions for the man.

"What was the name of your wife, Anthony?"

Anthony swallows his last bite of food. "I'm not sure if you want to know. It's…similar to yours."

"I'll be fine."

He swirls his wine glass before downing the last of that as well. "Her name was Leah."

Loki chuckles as he stands. "I should go. My new team is no doubt wondering where I am."

"It's not easy to get out of here," Anthony says, standing as well. "It's cold, dark, and wet."

Loki cocks an eyebrow. "The sewers?"

"Close. The ocean."

Loki blinks at him. "We're at the bottom of the ocean?"

"Not at the absolute bottom. Just near it. As far enough down that nothing will find us unless it's looking for us specifically."

"How is it difficult to get back up, though?" Loki asks. "You can just teleport, can't you?"

"Uh…" He scratches the back of his head. "Not exactly."

Loki frowns. "But you brought us—"

"To the bed, I know. I didn't actually get powers of teleportation, I…created it. There's a chip implanted into all of my holograms and also myself that allows us to appear at certain places in our home. The power source has to be so intense that I can't hook up a transporter to any place other than down here. It's powered by a device called an arc reactor, and leads to three places: beneath the chandelier above my bed, the far end of the lab, and the only way into the arc reactor room is by one as well."

"How do you get out to the surface, then?"

"I can breathe any substance and my body isn't affected by any pressure other than gravity, so I just have Jarvis come and get me so we can fly through the water. It leaves me soaking wet, but I have drying devices."

Loki nods. "that explains why Fury said it takes you thirty minutes to get back after disappearing."

Anthony takes Loki's hand, startling the god only just. He didn't realize how close he was. "You can't tell him, Lo'."

"About what?"

"About where I am. How I work. He'll figure out a way to catch me if you do. I've evaded S.H.I.E.L.D. capture for over a hundred years, and I'm sure as hell not going to let it happen because I trusted you."

"Why did you trust me, though? I made a deal."

"You're the God of Lies. Utilize that."

Loki smirks, pulling his hand away. "You're just trying to use me."

"So is Fury. at least on my side you get some sex out of it."

Loki grabs the front of his shirt and pulls him forward, growling at him. "I am not your _wife_."

"I know you're not," he says, giving Loki's hand a dark look. "You're nothing like her."

"Oh?" Loki lets him go and takes a step back. "What was she like, then? Tell me how _magnificent_ she was."

Anthony glares back. "She was nice, for starters. Not someone you'd expect me to enjoy the company of, but I've changed a lot since the fifteen-hundreds. She was always there to lend a hand or make something for a sick friend or neighbor. I might not have had any friends, but she managed to keep most of hers in the height of society. She loved kids and liked to make our pottery dishes and peel potatoes. She disliked making clothes, but she was good at it. She helped me build our house and all of the things inside of it.

"She loved me, okay? I was the social outcast who lived in a 'haunted house', but she came to visit anyway. I had bowls of animal tongues on my kitchen table and she ate beside them! She kissed me after my latest experiment involving opium seeds and cow eyes exploded all over my front. I got beat up in town and she risked her life to rescue me, and after her life was no longer in danger she risked everything else to marry me. You are _nothing_ like her."

"You don't know anything _about_ me," Loki snaps.

Anthony scoffs. "I create things that aren't supposed to exist and you don't think I can hack into a couple of files? Happy know everything that S.H.I.E.L.D. knows, and with your adopted brother a part of it…" He gives a dark smirk. "Well, that's mostly everything, isn't it?"

Loki snarls, pushing passed him to go back towards the lab.

"They won't help you, Lo'," he says after him.

Loki stops. He knows that Anthony is right, and he can't just destroy them all. He doesn't even know how. So he turns around to glare some more. "Get me out of here," he says.

Anthony smirks, walking out of the dining room and back into the living room they were in before. Loki rolls his eyes and follows him, knowing that this doesn't even lead to the hallway. He comes in to Anthony simply sitting on the couch, legs spread and arms across the back of the couch."

"I'll call Jarvis if you really want me to," he says, "or you can stay here a little longer with me."

Loki leans against the doorframe and crosses his arms. "You're trying to control me too, then?"

"I'm giving you a choice."

"And what happens when I choose the one you don't want?"

He grins. "I haven't gotten that far yet."

Loki smirks, pushing off of the frame and sauntering over to the man, sliding forward until he's straddling his waist.

"Do you always get what you want?" he asks, stroking a few fingers down his cheek.

Anthony breathes a laugh. "Only recently."

Loki wraps his arms around his neck. "Oh?"

He nods matter-of-factly. "I didn't with my last sexual encounter and I decided to kill them in the end."

Loki blinks. "For some reason that is incredibly hot."

Anthony shrugs. "We're both sadistic killers that giggle at death. It happens."

Loki kisses him hard, grinding down against him. Anthony moans into his mouth and drops his hands to his hips, gripping hard enough to leave bruises on any normal human.

"I shouldn't want you again," Anthony says huskily as Loki s sucking heavily on his neck.

"No," Loki breathes, dragging his tongue to the top of his jaw. "You shouldn't." He pulls his face away completely. "I really do have to go."

"Aw, come on," Anthony says, pouting out his bottom lip and wrapping ghis arms around Loki's waist. "You got me excited. Please?"

Loki gives an apologetic smile. "I'm walking on thin ice, Anthony. one slip-up in their presence and they've got me captured. I can't teleport like you can."

Anthony somehow gives a warm and seductive smile at the same time. "Why do you call me by my full name?"

"It's your name, isn't it?"

"Only my enemies call me by it."

"Then I shall continue to do so."

Anthony arches his neck up to kiss the bottom of Loki's chin. "Call me it again."

Loki tilts his head in question. "Anthony?"

Anthony nods.

Loki smiles. "Anthony."

Anthony closes his eyes. "Again."

Loki bends down to his ear. "Anthony."

Anthony moans, turning his head to capture Loki's mouth in a kiss.

"I can't," Loki says, continuing to kiss him back. "Thor will be able to tell. He'll get me in trouble."

"Stay anyway," Anthony says when he pulls away, pushing Loki sideways onto the couch. He glows gold at the same time, eyes glowing red so he can see like last night. "Misbehave with me."

Loki stares at him as he bends over the god, hooking his fingers into the elastic of the grey sweats. He doesn't pull them down until Loki licks his lips and nods, wherein he tosses them onto the floor and instantly pulls Loki right back up to straddle him. Loki takes his face in his hands and kisses him in a feral manner, gasping unashamedly when a hand grips around his cock. His kisses go mostly slack as Anthony pumps him, and just like last night, Anthony quits before Loki's release. He tries to catch his breath, noticing Anthony reach into the crack of the couh and pull out a small bottle of lubricant.

He laughs, still breathless. "Always be prepared?" he asks as Anthony slicks two of his fingers.

Anthony grins at him. "Every day, Lo'. Every day."

He reaches behind Loki, and the god is far too turned on to care who submits. He hasn't taken anyone in a while anyway. He moans deeply as Anthony pushes in the first finger, pressing their lips together in a fervent kiss. When Loki is stretched appropriately, he and Anthony instantly attack his jeans, Loki pushing up where his feet are braced on the couch so they can push his pants and boxers passed his knees to slip to the floor. Loki yanks his own shirt off as Anthony coats his length with the lubricant, followed by Loki pushing up again so Anthony can position himself beneath him. Loki bounces to sink down completely, both men moaning against the other when he reaches that point. Loki's hands are braced on Anthony's shoulders and Anthony's hands are holding to the sides of his ass as he pumps up and down.

"Oh gods, Loki," Anthony moans against his neck, spreading his cheeks as far apart as he can. "You're so hot, you're so—"

Loki cries out at the feeling of Anthony's cock hitting his prostate, doing everything he possibly can to make sure it happens over and over again. Anthony comes first this time, but Loki is less than seconds after when Anthony grips onto his cock again and pumps in time with his thrusts.

Loki rests his forehead against Anthony's shoulder as their breathing slows, listening to Anthony's own breath to help the calming sensation.

"Oh wow," Anthony says at length, the arm with his clean hand wrapping around Loki's back. "I knew I'd be glad that you stayed, but _damn_, not that glad."

Loki breathes a laugh. "To be honest I don't even care if Thor figures it out anymore. That was dynamic."

"Wanna grab that blanket and we can call a maid in? I prepared the lube, I just didn't think about the after cleanup."

Loki nods, looking to where his come-covered hand is pointing to the other end of the couch. Loki wraps the blanket around his shoulders and leans forward so that he can rest against Anthony's chest with his head sticking out of the blanket and also be covering Anthony's own bare skin. He calls on of the triplets in with a box of tissues and a hand towel, Loki pulling up so Anthony can pop softly out of him while Anthony uses the towel on his hand. He also uses it for most everything else before wrapping what little tissues they use in it and setting it on the floor beside the couch.

Loki steps off of him, keeping the blanket wrapped around him as he sinks down to the floor so he can put his sweats back on before having to push the blanket away and put on his shirt. Anthony has his own bottoms back on by the time Loki turns around, sitting back down on the couch, his eyes brown again.

"You probably should go now, though," he says, holding an arm out.

Loki sits down beside him, leaning against his side. "I probably should." He looks up at him, surprised to see that he's already looking down at him. "Contacts?"

He shakes his head. "Science."

"How do you mean?"

"I dyed them brown."

Loki's eyes widen. "You dyed your irises?"

He nods. "It's a very simple science, really. Didn't you ever watch the Wizard of Oz?"

Loki frowns, looking away to stare confusedly at the coffee table. "I think that one slipped me by."

"We'll watch it sometime, yeah?"

He looks back up at him. "You're invited me back, then?"

He smiles. "Or you could invite me over to your own place. I feel rude for just barging in for my remote that one time."

Loki smirks. "I don't have a television."

Anthony laughs. "We'll just have to come here, then."

Loki nods. "If you're blind, how do you…" He purses his lips. "See without seeing? Does that make sense?"

"It does. And I don't see anything, I've just obtained excellent hearing over the years. Over four-hundred years of being blind…well, let's just say I know that you were just pursing your lips."

Loki cocks an eyebrow.

"And now you've raised an eyebrow at me."

Loki smiles. "That's amazing."

He shrugs. "You close your eyes for four-hundred years and tell me how good _your_ hearing gets."

"I can see through things, my eyelids included. So probably not very good. If you can see when your eyes are red, though, why don't you always keep them that color?"

"It actually hurts to keep them like that for a long period of time."

Loki frowns. "It hurts?"

He nods. "The simple science is painful."

Loki nods. "I would ask you to explain it, but I probably wouldn't understand."

"You wouldn't." He reaches across Loki's chest to scratch the hand around his shoulder before resting his arm on Loki's lap. "The point is, I try not to use it too often. The headache it gives me gradually gets worse, especially when the seeing into the past is utilized."

"Why did you turn them red to see me, then?"

He chuckles. "I saw you when I showed you my past and I couldn't resist."

Loki looks away. "I look that much like her, then?"

"Not really. She was very feminine; short and petite, with full lips and a good sized bosom. You, on the other hand, look only like a man. In this form, anyway, since you can shape-shift."

"But she's still what you want to see."

It's not a question, but Anthony refutes it nonetheless: "I've wanted to see her since the day she died, Lo', but I swear I did it to see you."

Loki only nods.

Anthony sighs. "I'm used to one night stands, you know. Sex as many times in a night before killing them or drugging them to drop them off in an alley. You, though… You're somethin' special. I've never been with another villain before."

Loki snorts. "I've been with plenty. Some from earth, some not. Human s are so fragile, so I tend to try and stick with the latter."

"Yeah? Better than this?"

Loki smirks up at him. "I'm not going to answer that."

The moment he stands, Anthony grabs his hand and stands with him. "I know you need to go now," he says. "I'll take you to the door out of here."

Loki lets Anthony lead him in the opposite direction of the lab, up and up until they're at the _other_ end of the white hallway.

"Will you need Jarvis?" Anthony asks.

Loki shakes his head no. "This is where my shape-shifting abilities come in."

Anthony nods. "Just go inside, then. I'll have Jarvis work through all the buttons for you."

Loki grabs the front of his shirt and kisses him, and just when he's going to pull away, Anthony pushes him up against the wall behind him. Loki drops one hand to Anthony's ass and the other to his high, arching his knee up to his hip.

"Fuck," Anthony breathes as Loki swings them around so that he's against the wall instead, trailing his mouth down his neck to suck and bite. "Fuck," he says again as Loki drops down to his knees and works swiftly at his jeans. "Lo', I don't know if I'll be able to—_oh_. Never mind."

Loki smirks at his reaction to the same lick up the underside of his cock that he had done to Loki last night. The god pushes his bottoms down to his ankles and swallows him down to the hilt, soaking in the moans from above.

Loki works him swiftly, 'cause yeah, he should have left hours ago. He swallows all of the release, licking him clean before standing.

"Without a doubt glad you stayed," Anthony says breathlessly, pulling Loki in for a kiss.

Loki chuckles, leaning against the door as Anthony puts his pants back on again.

"Definitely sated for the day," he says, pressing the button to open the door.

Loki can't help but smirk again. "Glad to hear it." He steps backwards into the circular compartment, waving his fingers goodbye as the door slides shut.

* * *

Ending authors notes: This chapter was just minding its own business when an entire building of smut toppled over and crashed on top of him, the poor dear. Also a special thanks to Iron Man 1 and 2 soundtracks for being what I mostly listened to during this chapter! Ps the next chapter is…short. And sort of angsty but not really.


	4. Ch 3: The Breaking

**3: The Breaking**

Loki wakes the next morning to a stream of light escaping through his blinds.

"Ugh, sun," he mutters, moving his arm to block it.

Except his arm doesn't move. Something is holding it down.

He frowns, looking down to see none other than Anthony, curled up tight against his side and his arms wrapped tight around his waist.

"Tony?" he says confusedly.

"Mmm, no," he mumbles, snuggling closer. "Don' call me Tone."

"Anthony," Loki says.

He opens tired eyes and smiles. "I brought your armor stuff. Do you always sleep in your bulky clothes?"

"I—thanks, yes, I do. What are you doing here? How didn't you wake me up?"

He hums, pulling his arm out from beneath Loki and sitting up to stretch. "I wanted to see you, so I came. As far as waking up, I have no idea. Maybe your body doesn't see me as a threat anymore."

Loki blinks. "What time did you get here?"

He shrugs. "Two in the morning." He lies back down. "And now it's eleven-something. What are you doing today?"

"Something with Thor. I didn't pay attention to yesterday's briefing well enough to know what, though."

"Yeah? What time?"

"Noon, so need to get going." He sits up, stretching out and ignoring the way Anthony watches him. He swings out of bed and walks into the bathroom, turning on the water so it can warm up while he undresses from the clothes that Anthony gave him yesterday.

"Can I join you?" Anthony asks from the bathroom door.

"No," Loki says, tossing the sweats at him. "You'll distract me."

"If I promise not to?"

Loki eyes him. "Promise?"

"May your brother strike me down with lightning if I lie."

Loki rolls his eyes, opening the curtain. "Fine."

Anthony whoops, kicking off his won black sweats and the like before stepping in after him.

Loki again ignores him, soaping up his upper half.

"Here,' he says, handing the bar of soap to Anthony when he's finished rinsing off. "Make yourself useful."

Anthony smirks. "I'd be glad to."

Loki barely gets through rinsing his hair before Anthony decides to break his promise and distract him, wherein he's returning Loki the same favor as Loki did to him before leaving yesterday.

"Ahh, Anthony, I said not to…to…"

It doesn't matter. Loki gives up, turning off the water as he sinks to the floor of the shower so they don't drown in spray. He'll fishing washing in just a minute, and _then_ he'll get Thor to strike the Hologram.

**XxX**

Loki is late by ten minutes by the time he's jumping out of his window, Anthony having popped away just before him. Loki will make _sure_ that Thor hits him with a damn light—

He gasps, landing on the mansion roof beside where his brother is already waiting for him. "That little—"

"Who do you speak of, brother?" Thor asks, interrupting him.

"No one," Loki mutters. _Of course he'd be alright with being hit by insanely hot electricity_, Loki thinks darkly. _He's immune to it!_

"You are late, you know."

"My shower ran longer than expected," he says, pushing his fingers through his still drying hair. He doesn't dry it very well since he's not a big fan of the heat. He showers in cold water too, usually, but he sucked it up this morning so Anthony wouldn't ask about it. The _last_ thing he wants to do is explain to a mostly-stranger the reason he can turn his eyes red as well. "What are we doing again?"

"Guard duty," a female voice says, and Loki looks over to see that Romanov is once again at the chimney. "Fury wants to see you first, though."

"Are you always around?" Loki asks her.

"Thor's my partner," she says. "I'm always around _him_."

Loki cocks an eyebrow. "Why not Barton?"

"We try to mix it up. Super spy with god, super assassin with super soldier. Banner's on emergency backup."

"Why must we speak to the Man of One-Eyed Anger?" Thor asks before they can continue.

"Just Loki," Romanov says. "Come on, C and S are almost back for you to take their shift."

The three of them again go through the diving process, coming to the very same conference room. This time, though, the door is shut.

"Director Fury will be right with you," the agent at the door says.

Loki narrows his eyes. The only thing more important to Fury than Loki is a man out to kill him specifically.

Making sure that none of the other three think it suspicious, Loki leans against the wall beside the door and channels out his magic energy so that he can hear everything going on in the room behind him.

"I don't think you understand my power in this situation, _sir_," Fury says darkly.

Someone laughs, causing Loki to go cold. He knows that Loki. "Nicky, _please_," Anthony says, probably rolling his eyes. "Your power over him is as great as the ability to cook a hard boiled egg on a block of ice. He's eating out of _my_ hand, not yours."

"What makes me think I'll believe your bullshit? He has no ties to you?"

Anthony chuckles. "No ties, you say? In the last forty-eight hours we've given each other blowjobs and had sex twice."

Fury is probably blinking in the short silence that follows. "Haven't you read the Norse myths, Hologram? Loki is the God of Fire and Lies with an insatiable sex drive. As I said before, _he has no ties to you_."

"Actually, yes, I have read them, and they also portray him as a beefy thing in a white skirt, ginger hair, and blue eyes. Those are the Norse _myths_, but we've got the _real thing_. There are ties, my friend, as thin as they could be. I don't think he knows it, but it's not hard to notice. He looks exactly like my Leah would as a man and he's constantly asking questions about it. He thinks I only fancy him because of that, but he's wrong." He chuckles. "Even you can't deny he's sexy as hell."

Fury snorts. "He's not my type, so yes, I can. Why are you telling me this, Hologram?"

"It's Tony, actually, and I'm telling you so you can watch your back. I can guarantee that he'll be back at my place tonight, and by then he won't just be eating out of my hand, if you know what I mean."

"I wish I didn't," Fury mutters darkly.

"He's not going to go with this deal much longer. He's the God of Lies and I'll get him to use that to his advantage. Your two biggest problems working together. How's that sound? Fun, I bet. He's mine, Nicky. Back off."

Loki growls, not caring what any of Thor, Romanov, or the other agent think of him. He belongs to someone, then? Not in a million years. Loki doesn't _belong_ to people. Thor tried that once and got a spear through his arms. If gods could scar he'd have one. How could Anthony betray him like this? The moment that Anthony trusted Loki, Loki trusted him right back. He was the only person he thought he could. It didn't matter that they were supposed to be enemies; they would never hurt each other. But here's Anthony, revealing things that Loki never wanted revealed.

"Brother?" Thor asks, resting a hand on his shoulder. "Are you alright?"

Romanov snorts. "You look like you're about to have an aneurism," she says.

Loki shoves the other agent aside and kicks down the locked door, storming into a room filled with only Fury. He must have popped away the moment Loki lifted his foot. Damn super-human hearing.

"I know where he lives," he growls, eyes dripping red. He doesn't care what he looks like. He's too angry to mask his true form.

Fury's eye widens. "Hold tight, icicle boy. We can't just break in. He keeps his hard-light holograms there. We'll be ripped apart."

"Not if you blow everything up at once. The power source of all the holograms are down there as well. If you destroy all of it then they'll be destroyed as well. I can show the exact coordinates."

Fury cocks an eyebrow "You heard everything that just happened, didn't you?"

Loki glares. "Let's not discuss it. Are you going to help me destroy him or not? That's what this truce is for, isn't it? For _me_ to help _you_?"

The director blinks at him. "We'll prepare for the assault immediately."

Loki gives an evil smirk. "I can't wait."

**XxX**

S.H.I.E.L.D. is ready for the attack two days later, and Loki doesn't see Anthony or any of his holograms for any of that time. He _has_ to know what's happening or he would have tried to get into Loki's pants again. Loki knows him well enough for that.

But no. He's just gone. He must have evacuated what he could. Maybe he's trying to find a way to let the holograms survive without the arc reactor. A smaller one, for just one of them. Loki's not sure if he'd be more likely to keep Jarvis or Pepper; probably Jarvis, what with his being a robot and having extra abilities than the "human" holograms.

Loki is standing on a roof as close to the coordinates as he can, one foot on the ledge as helicopters and the like zoom over him to deploy the bombs. Everyone has been informed to stay clear and away form the beaches, and the Avengers are making sure that the city actually obeys that safety command.

Loki is using his magic to use his super-sight, and just before the bomb is dropped, Loki sees a light zipping away from the house. He instantly shape-shifts into a seagull and speeds over the water so nobody suspects him, diving down towards the water and snapping into a bottlenose dolphin the moment he touches the water. It's easy to locate Anthony and Jarvis, mostly because they haven't completely cleared the perimeter yet. Anthony is just…watching, his eyes red. Jarvis is sinking slowly at his side, no lights coming from his robotic figure. With the arc reactor destroyed, Jarvis is dead.

Loki has no idea if Anthony's noticed him, but he swims around him until he can come up to his side, shifting back into his human form to float beside him.

It doesn't matter that they're under water. They can still hear each other:

"I didn't think you'd really do it," he says quietly.

"Seems I did."

"I was _lying_, Loki!" he cries, grabbing Loki's arm and gripping _tight_. "Fury's the one I want to kill the _most_! I was trying to piss him off!"

Loki gives a small laugh. "Funny. You pissed me off instead."

Anthony punches his shoulder, but Loki doesn't even feel it. Anthony's strength wasn't affected by his explosion, obviously. "You bastard!" he yells.

"You want to get me back?" he asks. "Do it the right way." Taking a deep breath of water, Loki closes his eyes and morphs into his true Jotun form. He opens his blood red eyes, looking into brown orbs.

He shines gold for a moment before his eyes are red as well, his eyes widening. "I don't remember this being in the old myths."

Loki simply blinks at him. "I'm only part Frost Giant." He takes Anthony's hand and freezes the water around them so that they float to the top, breaking out of it to stand on top before freezing a top layer of the ocean so they can stand on it.

"I'm wet," Anthony whispers, looking sadly out over the water. "My matches are wet. My gasoline is gone. My…" He sniffs in deeply. "Everything I ever loved is gone."

Loki tries to smile, but it doesn't come. Anthony betrayed him, so he should feel better after getting back at him, right? Not having the right feelings is… It's not right.

"I'll give you a choice, just as you gave me," Loki says, taking Anthony's other hand as well. "You can be taken in to S.H.I.E.L.D. and most likely executed, you can sink back into the ocean with your broken creations, or you can get over yourself and run away. She's been dead for nearly five-hundred years, Anthony. Most people just visit the grave every year with a bouquet of flowers and get a job at a coffee shop."

Anthony looks away from him. "Obviously I'm not most people."

"No. You're all people. You have four-hundred and forty years of knowledge and you're using it and all your wealth for revenge. This isn't the Count of Monte Cristo."

Anthony lets out a tight, broken laugh. "It's not just the revenge, Loki! Those were my creations! They were my _family_. Now they're gone. The blueprints, the power source, the light sources… I needed them. They kept me going. They all had different personalities, and Pepper and I would…" He smiles. "She did all my paperwork. Made sure I ate something and got some sleep. Happy was always there to work out with me, making sure not to use his hard-light to its greatest extent so he wouldn't break my face with a single punch. Jarvis would call me 'sir' and offer to fly me high enough to watch the sunset. That's how we ran into you. We were hoping the clouds wouldn't be so bad."

"Too bad they were," Loki says quietly.

Anthony looks up at him, shining gold so that his eyes turn brown again. "I don't want to kill anymore," he says. "It's too much work. She's gone and I can't do anything about it. I've never once thought about what _she_ would want, you know? She would kill me for hurting anybody else. She would have left me hundreds of years ago if I had kept doing this. She was so…gentle."

Loki is just about to say something more, but a helicopter comes down dangerously close to the water, and Fury holds up a megaphone: "Loki," he says. "Bring him here. The truce is over as soon as I shut this door."

Loki blinks at him before turning back to Anthony, who's just staring out over the expanse of ocean, not really at anything in particular. Anthony never answered the three choices that Loki gave him, but he knows which one he would have chosen anyway.

So he turns back to Fury. "No," he says. "The truce is over now."

At the same time that Fury yells into a com to open fire, Loki shifts into his human form, the ice melting away and he and Anthony sinking down beneath the waves. Scuba divers drop in above them, but Anthony is already holding onto Loki's dolphin fin as they swim away towards the shore. Anthony is slower than the god, but Loki just swings him onto his back and sprints off at his inhuman speed, telling Anthony to hold on tight when he swings up the walls that he can to get into his room. He just barely misses being seen by the helicopters, slamming his window shut and jumping out of the way. He closes the blinds when they pass, sliding down the wall beside it to catch his breath.

Anthony attacks him, throwing a lamp at him, instantly followed by the digital clock. Loki catches them both, tossing them aside to be ready for the next thing that Anthony throws.

But he just stands there, breathing even heavier than Loki and glaring so darkly at him that Loki is pretty sure he's not going to be able to sleep tonight for fear of being stabbed to death.

"I didn't say I wanted to be saved!" he yells, grabbing Loki's pillow and throwing it. Loki just lets it hit him. It won't hurt and it will hopefully make Anthony feel better that he actually got in a shot. "What if I _wanted_ Fury to take me, huh? Or to sink away and never come back! What if I had chosen one of _those_?!"

Loki gives the tiniest of smiles. "I haven't gotten that far yet."

Anthony lets out a choking noise, dropping down in front of Loki and throwing his arms around his neck. "You bastard," he whispers.

Loki laughs, wrapping his arms around his waist. "We'll go away, yeah? Some place that Thor won't find me and S.H.I.E.L.D. won't find you. You've got me now. You don't need to kill them anymore."

Anthony slides forward so that he can straddle Loki, shaking only slightly. Loki knows that he's not crying, but he can't tell exactly what the shaking is for. "It had to be done this way, didn't it?" he asks.

"What do you mean?" Loki asks, dragging his nails lightly over Anthony's back.

"Where all of my things are destroyed. I never would have stopped if I didn't have a reason to."

Loki sighs. "Yes," he says quietly. "You were never going to get here back. Killing is fun, but not when you have a reason to do it."

Anthony pulls away to look at him. "How does Hawaii sound?" he asks.

Loki smirks. "It sounds brilliant."

* * *

Ending authors notes: like I said, short chapter. I guess…idk I got lazy and decided to cut the entire fic short to be honest. What I really need to do is finish editing my 300-plus page story ugh. Either way, one more chapter: the epilogue. Probably more smut. Who knows? :P

Also, a special thanks to my Infinite Playlist, being every fucking song from every fucking genre ever. I even have a Gregorian chant song, guys. Followed by Brokencyde, AC/DC, Flo Rida, Selena Gomez, Owl City, Florence and the Machine, the old Scooby Doo shows soundtrack, and many more. What even is my music taste?

PS the epilogue is short as balls. Haha whoops.


	5. Epilogue: The Morning Calm

**Epilogue: The Morning Calm**

(1 pages; 463 words)

Loki watches Anthony stretch over him, his brown eyes blinking open to smile up at him. "You know what I'm really glad for?" he asks, tracing a finger over Loki's blue chest.

Loki smiles. "No. What?"

"You. Hawaii may be nice, but I don't think I would survive without my air conditioning to cuddle with me."

Loki chuckles, bending down to kiss his forehead. "You slept well, then?"

"Better than well. How long have we been here again?"

"Three weeks."

He sighs happily, rolling over so that he can lie on top of Loki, resting his temple against Loki's cold chest to cool down from the heat and blankets. "And not a single S.H.I.E.L.D. sighting," he breathes, warm air washing over Loki's skin. "I can't remember the last time I was so happy."

Loki smirks. "Possibly last night?" he asks, referring to the "mind blowing" blowjob, as Anthony referred to it as.

Anthony grins and, instead of answering, kisses his way down Loki's chest. He throws the blankets aside the farther down he goes, and just as Loki is biting his bottom lip to keep from moaning, Anthony bypasses his groin altogether, kissing down his hip and thigh. He instead pushes both of Loki's legs up so that they're bent at the knees, kissing even further until his tongue is tracing around Loki's entrance.

It doesn't matter that Loki was biting his lip; he lets out a breathy moan anyway. Anthony stretches him slowly, using both his tongue and fingers. Loki wraps his legs around his waist as he pushes in, bending down for a soft kiss.

Loki had never made love before, but there are just some things you can't avoid when living with someone romantically for three weeks. You tend to fall in love, no matter how hard you try not to. You fall so hard you never want to let them go, and you'd do anything to protect them. Maybe you won't realize it right away, but its there, pooling in your stomach before it bursts out in different ways and colors.

And maybe Loki wasn't Anthony's first love, but he was the second, and that makes all the difference.

* * *

Ending authors notes: definitely more smut. Anyway, I guess…hope you enjoyed? To be honest I didn't even have very much fun writing chapter 3. I know I rushed it, I just really don't care to go back and fix it or add anymore or blargh. Whatever, not my problem. Special thanks to all my dedicated readers that like my good stories enough to put up with the shitty ones like this XD Hope you enjoyed enough! Tell me what you think? Or don't. It doesn't matter to me either way. Tootle-oo, loves.


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